Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Henry.
What I wouldn’t give to hear his voice.
I grab my cell phone, pull up my list of contacts—
I don’t have his number.
Why would I?
I didn’t ask for it. He didn’t offer it.
I could call Angie. Ask to speak to Henry—
Uh…no.
Angie and Jason left this morning for their honeymoon in Switzerland.
I don’t have any other contact information for any of—
Except yes, I do. I have Sage’s number from the bachelorette party she planned in Boulder for Angie.
I find her name in my list and—
No.
I won’t be that woman.
The woman who calls an acquaintance and asks about her brother.
That’s not me.
I’m the woman who takes advantage of the amazing opportunity that just landed in her lap.
The surgical seminar.
I have an advanced reading assignment and only one evening to get caught up.
I won’t pine over a lost love that was never anything more than in my mind.
I will study. I will learn. I will excel.
I gather my reading materials and settle in at my desk. I try to immerse myself in the world of medicine again. Each word should be a lifeline, pulling me back to the world where I thrive, where I have a future mapped out, where there is no room for uncertainty or emotional turmoil.
But Henry Simpson has permeated even this stronghold. Every term, every theory, every case study… Somehow they all remind me of him. His intense blue eyes. His touch. The warmth that spread through me every time he looked my way.
I shake my head, try to chase away the thoughts. But they’re persistent.
I need to focus. I’ve got to get back on track. This isn’t a place for Henry. It’s a place for me.
I try to concentrate on the case studies spread before me, to lose myself in the intricacies of the human body. I rub my eyes and force myself to reread the same line for the third time.
“Patient presents with a perforated duodenal ulcer, requiring an emergency laparotomy.”
I trace the words with my finger. Ulcer. Perforation. Surgical repair. Blood loss, sutures, cautery. I should be thinking about anatomy, about the steps I’d take in the OR if I were holding the scalpel.
But instead, my brain keeps circling back to Henry. How he cut me open in a way I never saw coming, and how I’m the one left trying to stitch myself back together.
“No!” I say out loud again. “You won’t waste this opportunity!”
I bring my focus back to work when my phone buzzes.
My heart leaps.
It’s Henry.
I know it is.
Two
Henry
Darkness swallows me whole.
Not the kind you see when you close your eyes to sleep. This is heavier. Denser. It has weight. It presses on me the way the beam pressed down before everything went black, as if the universe itself has pinned me to the ground.
It all makes a strange kind of sense.
The weight of taking a man’s life has pressed down on me for so long.
This is simply more of the same. The physical as well as the mental.
Like my body has finally caught up to my head. To my soul.
I let myself believe I’d made peace with it. That what I did was justified, that Angie and Jason walked away alive because I pulled the trigger.
But there’s no escaping it. The image comes back every time I close my eyes.
The sound.
The silence that followed.
The way it’s never left me.
Now I’m truly crushed under something I can’t fight.
I don’t know where I am exactly. Somewhere between the moment of the crack, the groan of old wood, the sickening rush of air…and here.
Here feels like nowhere.
But then I sense it.
Warm breath against my palm.
A nudge.
Gentle at first but then more insistent.
A whine.
A low and mournful whine.
It cuts through the disorder in my head.
My dog. Zach.
Loyal. Always loyal.
He’s here, which must mean I’m not completely gone.
I try to move my hand, try to reassure him the way I always do—scratch behind his ears, murmur “good boy”—but nothing happens.
My body doesn’t obey my mind.
Another whine.
A paw pressing into my chest.
The vibration of his throat when he lets out a bark that sounds sharp. Desperate.
And then…
Her.
Tabitha.
A rush of warmth breaks through the numbness.
I see her in flashes. Her blond hair glinting under the summer sun. The fire in those amber-brown eyes when she looks at me, like she sees straight through the wall I’ve built around myself.
I didn’t mean to let her in. I wasn’t supposed to. I can’t be what she deserves when I’m only a shell of what I used to be.
But Tabitha.
She slipped past every barrier I built. She didn’t even try to. She was just herself.
Determined. Brilliant. Funny. A little reckless. A lot beautiful.
I let myself fall until I looked up and realized I couldn’t go back.
And now? Now it’s too late.
The darkness presses tighter, squeezes the air from my lungs.
Except…
Maybe that’s not the darkness.